Last Day to Love
by Akihikari
Summary: How do you hate someone who does not believe in hatred? How do you hurt someone whose only crime is love? The answer is obvious to you only in hindsight: you can't.


_Last Day to Love_

_**Five**_

You do not expect him to look your way as he hangs from the post. His breath comes in short, shallow spurts now, and though he still faces forward, his eyes have been shut for quite some time. From this distance, it hard to tell if the streaks of red on his strangely peaceful face are blood or tears.

You hope for blood and yet, as his feeble twitching grows weaker, you are possessed by a desperate certainty that is horrifying in its magnitude: he will not die.

He may hang in chains for days, but his spirit will keep him alive through his pain and one day the irons will give way, worn through by rust, and he will drop to the ground and dust himself off and stand again. The Signless will stand again. Such is your conviction, that you are almost relieved to hear his final cry—a fury that you had never thought him capable of feeling, a divinely pure hatred. A hatred that, for you, comes hours too late.

_Where was this hatred when I needed it the most, you fool?_

When his head drops onto his chest at last, a turgid silence settles among the crowd, like wind through long grass. For a moment, you see the spectacle before you freeze in unanimous harmony... suspended breaths teeming with jubilation and wonder and shimmering horror.

_So he died after all._

By the time movement ripples at the heart of the crowd, where the executioner seems to snap out of a daze to unclasp the irons, you have turned away.

_**Four**_

The weather is still gentle this early into the sweep, but no curtains can completely bar the stubborn sunrays as they seep into your respiteroom through the very walls. Even with the lights off, your eyes can still distinguish the slopes and swells of the body beside you, the soft heaving of his shoulders as he walks among dreams that you do not care to know about.

_Let him sleep_, you think absent-mindedly, even as you trace the path of his spine with a single long finger.

The sun makes a home in the crooks of his sweaty joints, on the swoop of his neck, the narrow hips... You never thought you'd find daylight so becoming on the bare skin of another, so immeasurably enticing.

_Let him sleep_, you repeat to yourself, but your lips have found a curved shoulder and your hands wander southward again. _I should let him sleep._

_This is the last time he'll be able to wake before he goes to sleep forever._

_**Three**_

_Dirtblood._

But how he writhes beneath you, how he clutches at you, the royalty in your veins breaking skin to color his loathsome fingernails as he tenses and squirms and throws back his head in a hard, brittle moan, only to curl into himself again as you thrust deeper. The troll with no sign or caste for his blood sobs into the crook of your neck; clenches frantically, helplessly, around your fully sheathed bulge.

_Lowest of the low, a mutant, an outcast, a vermin fit to be culled on sight..._

You hear a deep hiss of pleasure and a breathless, rasping cry of "Scum!"

It is your own voice, of course... ripped from the depths of your gut by the despicable _scum_ who paints the picture of delirious arousal under your bucking hips. Did you expect to resist him? How, when he insists on moving like this, meeting your motions with his in involuntary tandem? How, when the very hue of the tears that pool in his clenched eyes reflects the aching emotion within you?

_Just like this._

_Cling to me like this. _

Because the more this filth mewls against your sweat-beaded skin, the deeper his nails claw into you, the more his legs tighten around your waist as you plunge into him again and again again, the more certain you are that this is all you could have done. This is all you could ever do. _Just this, just for this wretched day in my life, just because there was no way to resist._

With your hands buried in his hair and his unworthy body surrounding all of you, you close your eyes and pray for severance. But all you can see is the lowest of the low, the mutant, the outcast, the vermin fit to be culled on sight as he pulls you lower still to meet your lips with his.

_**Two**_

"Your eyes", you seethe at him, reveling in the small jerk he gives at the heat of your breath. "I can't stand your eyes."

_So fucking red. They've got no business being so red. Piece of shit._

The offending eyes flutter shut as you lean even closer, now literally nose to nose with your prisoner and exquisitely livid. "If you can't stand them, you're free to look away. Or do you intend to blind me?"

_Blind you?_ "That's the last thing on my mind", you snarl. "What's the point in you not being able to see what I'm gonna do to you? Where's the fun in that, you filth?"

_What am I going to do to you?_

"I am not filth", he murmurs, and you are lost. There is no stopping your hand as it closes around his throat, pinning him to the wall, only spurred on by the savage pleasure you feel at his gasp of pain. "Keep those eyes shut, dirtblood." Your voice is brusque, serrated.

_They're so red and_

_they won't stop smiling at me._

_The freak smiles with his fucking mutant eyes._

"So what are you going to do to me, then?" he says faintly. "I don't imagine I have much longer to live in any case. They wouldn't leave me in prison; my supporters are too resourceful."

_They haven't told you?_ "It doesn't matter when you die", you growl. "It's not going to be by my hand." _Well... not intentionally. _"Killing's the easy way out, you see." _Why'd I want to kill you when I can hear you scream?_

_But what am I going to do to you?_

_**One**_

You watch the guards haul him off to the dungeons below—no windows, no way for him to send so much as a signal. And yet, as he takes one last look around the makeshift courtroom that has just condemned him, his eyes meet yours in the shadows and whisper, _it's okay._

_**Two**_

"I'm going to break you, signless scum", you hiss in his ear. "I'm going to stamp that smile right outta your freak eyes. I'm gonna paint your skin with your hideous red."

His breathing is a little shorter now as your hand tightens around his neck, but he gasps, "You're not going to break me. Nobody can break me."

"Oh." There is little anger left in your voice now. All of it has traveled to the hand that slips beneath his ragged cloak, traveling higher past his belly, brushing against a covered nipple before a lone finger slips between those foul pants and his skin. "Oh, but I can."

Is it satisfaction you feel at his shiver, or is it dismay?

_This is what I'll do to you._

_**Three**_

You'd rip his clothes off if you weren't worried about questions being asked. Having to pull them off and throw them aside is somewhat less fulfilling, but it pales before the abject serenity on his face as his eyes, redder than ever and still smiling, look up into your own.

He's sprawled beneath you and completely bare against your equally naked body as you heave atop him. "You know what I'm gonna do", you spit at him. "You know I could do this till sundown and nobody would hear your screaming."

_Why aren't you afraid?_

"I know", he says quietly, and his voice trembles in time to the motions of your hands. _He knows... the bastard, he knows._

_How do I break you if you bend like this?_

"I hate you and I hate this", you mutter against his skin as, to your astonishment, his own hands rise to settle on your back in a loose but earnest embrace. "You mutant _shit!_ Fuck, I want to hate you so much!"

Is he the one holding you now? "Try, then. Do your best to hate me. I'm not stopping you."

_But you are._

_What am I going to do to you, really?_ you wonder as you claim his mouth in the first of many brutal, lip-tearing kisses. If you draw blood, if his disgustingly red blood spills into your mouth in the process, you do not care any more.

_How can I hate anything about you?_

_**Four**_

He turns over and you see that he is not sleeping at all; his eyes, his weary tear-stained eyes are open, and they're still smiling gently at you in the half-light.

"It's going to be tonight, isn't it?" he whispers before you can open your mouth to say you know not what. "They're going to publicly execute me tonight come sundown."

You have nothing to say in response.

"Don't shy away from the truth, Orphaner. That's a pitiful way to live."

"Says the guy who doesn't have more than a few hours ahead of him", you sneer. _How I wish I could hate you._ "'Pitiful way to live"? That's rich, coming from you."

"Is it?" his smile has finally spread to his lips too—lips that are still swollen from your desperate attentions. "I think I've lived a good life. Not has comfortable as yours, certainly, but a great deal more rewarding."

You let out a noise of irrepressible annoyance. "Look at you. On death row and in the arms of a highblood before your execution day, preaching about tolerance and equality when your fucking beliefs just let me have my way with you—"

"Like I said", he cuts in, voice soft, "don't shy away from the truth. My beliefs were exactly what kept you from having your way with me. You thought you were going to break me, didn't you?"

You remain silent, but not even your glare carries the venom that you wish it did.

"I've lived my life for love", he mumbles, turning away unexpectedly. "I don't intend to sully its last hours with hate."

And again you think, _he should sleep. Let him sleep._

"Can you walk to the recuperacoon or do I need to carry you?"

"I—I'm sorry?"

"You heard me", you snap.

_**Five**_

You do not expect him to look your way as he hangs from the post; he is some distance off and you are little more than a face in the crowd, but something in your chest shatters a little when he closes his eyes and you know he will not open them again.

For just a moment, you allow yourself to believe that he may hang in chains for days, but his spirit—his _love—_will keep him alive through his pain and one day the irons will give way, worn through by rust, and he will drop to the ground and dust himself off and stand again. The Signless will stand again. Such is your conviction, that you are almost relieved to hear his final cry—a fury that you had never thought him capable of feeling, a divinely pure hatred. A hatred that comes far, far too late to save your heart.

_Where was this hatred when I needed to see it the most?_

_You said you lived for love, you fool... Is this how you want to die?_

_Have I taught you how to hate? How could I, when I never hated you?_

When his chin drops onto his chest at last, a silence bows the heads of the throng, like grass that bends with the breeze... always bending, never breaking, never hating... a silence colored with jubilation and wonder and shimmering horror. And where are you in that mass of emotion? Lost in a memory of the day prior, when a redblooded troll offered you his love and a smile that said, _it's okay._

_Did I teach you how to hate?_

_Or did you give me all the love you had?_

By the time the executioner begins unclasping the irons around his wrists, you have turned away.


End file.
